Health in Our Hands at the MSU Science Festival in Detroit

CREATE for STEM Institute staff and volunteers presented at the Michigan State University Science Festival on Sunday April 15th to share information about diabetes with families in Detroit. Children used the online simulation from the Health in Our Hands middle school curriculum to plan and carry out an investigation about diabetes. The game uses simulated sand rats that can contract diabetes when fed sugary lab food. Using the simulation, users can ask a question, identify sand rats by gender and genetic risk for diabetes, place rats in pens, and feed them sugary lab food or native plants. They can see the results in real time and analyze the data to answer their questions. The Sand Rat Simulation was developed by the Concord Consortium and curriculum developers as part of the project, "A New Genomic Framework for Schools and Communities" funded by the Science Education Partnership Award - National Institutes of Health.